Grizzlies take road winning streak to Boston

Basketball Betting Lines

03/10/2010 - (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - The Memphis Grizzlies will attempt to keep the longest road winning streak in franchise history intact when they visit a place they've historically struggled over the years, Boston's TD Garden, for tonight's matchup with the Atlantic Division-leading Celtics.

Memphis heads to Beantown having prevailed in each of its last six outings as the visitor, with the team's last road loss coming at Minnesota on February 6. That success has kept the surprising Grizzlies in the Western Conference playoff race, where the club currently trails Portland by four games for the eighth and final postseason seed.

The Grizzlies haven't been nearly as successful in their own building as of late, but did manage to halt a string of eight straight defeats at FedExForum with Monday's 107-101 triumph over New Jersey. Rudy Gay and Mike Conley each scored 21 points for Memphis, with Gay coming down with 10 rebounds on the evening.

Marc Gasol also recorded a double-double as the Grizzlies posted their third win in their last four overall games, finishing with 19 points and 13 boards to help offset the absence of Zach Randolph, Memphis' leading scorer and rebounder this season.

Randolph, who's averaging 20.8 points and 11.8 rebounds in 2009-10, sat out the contest with a stiff back but is expected to play this evening.

The Grizzlies could use the services of the talented forward as they try to halt a six-game losing streak in this series. Memphis has not defeated the Celtics since a 98-96 decision at the Garden on December 6, 2006 and has fallen in four of its last five trips to Boston, where the team is 5-8 all- time.

The Celtics had won four in a row prior to last night's narrow loss at resurgent Milwaukee, which rallied late in the fourth quarter to come through with an 86-84 victory.

Boston had taken a 77-72 midway through the final period on a three-point play from Rajon Rondo, but the Bucks answered with a 14-2 run to take a seven-point lead with under three minutes to go.

A Kevin Garnett jump hook with 53.2 seconds left pulled the Celtics within 86-84, and Boston had a final chance to tie or win after Milwaukee's Brandon Jennings missed a three-point shot in the final moments. Paul Pierce's jumper from the right wing would clank off the rim as time expired, however.

"[The Bucks] just made big plays down the stretch and we didn't," Boston coach Doc Rivers said. "I thought all the 50-50 plays in the game was going to be the difference in the game -- loose ball, offensive rebounds. I thought they won that battle."

Rondo ended with 20 points and six assists while Kevin Garnett compiled 14 points and 10 rebounds in the loss. Ray Allen, coming off a 25-point performance in Sunday's 86-83 home win over Washington, was limited to a mere three points on 0-of-3 shooting for the Celtics.

Pierce, Boston's leading scorer at 17.6 points per game, struggled as well. The All-Star forward finished with 12 points, but made just 3-of-13 shots from the field.

Despite Tuesday's loss, the Celtics own a comfortable eight-game lead over Toronto for first place in the Atlantic Division and are 2 1/2 back of Orlando for the Eastern Conference's No. 2 playoff seed.

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FOOTBALL TRASH TALK

NFL Football Trash Talk

Trash talk has a place in every competitive endeavor (except baseball; those stirrup-wearers are too busy chewing on their sunflower seeds and their supplements to worry about what their opponents are doing).

Fantasy sports is no exception. Any intelligent discussion of the subject would probably start with a thesis statement or a definition of terms. Thankfully, this wont be an intelligent discussion.

Let me just say that I am happy to take a place in this space alongside my talented colleagues, even our commissioner. (You should see how she bleats like a demented paper boy about league fees on our fantasy site).

Trash talking, I would argue, is primarily about amusing your friends, their sheeplike demeanors and sloping foreheads notwithstanding. The best place I have found for football trash talking is at www.SportsAlarm.com.

Beyond the entertainment factor, though, I would recognize that the sophomoric ritual has one advantage, when properly applied. It magnifies your fantasy triumphs and mitigates your fantasy failures by transforming the eventual point total into an afterthought. Winning makes it seem like your opponent really is a truss-owning, lapel-pin-wearing nitwit. And in defeat, trash talk can be the air bag to break the fall from your hyperbolic heights. The plug-necked yahoos on your team, you can say, will be sacking groceries by the end of the season.

The best trash talk, in my view, is layered and nuanced. And it doesnt focus only on your opponents team. It picks apart your opponent. The idea is to create a shock-and-awe-scale blizzard of nonsense, and the goal is to make your opponent drop his hands from his keyboard in exasperation.

What team does your opponent root for? Accuse a Giants fan of having a Joe Namath pillowcase. Wheres your opponent from? Give a look of concern no matter his reply, then say, I'll try to type slower for you next time. Is your opponent into politics? Label everyone a tax-and-spend corporate shill.

Cap all that with a liberal application of irrelevance. For instance, dont just conclude by saying your opponent is a twerp who drafts like my grandmother. Say that your opponent is a sweater-wearing, eyebrow-plucking twerp who drafts his team about as well as Zsa Zsa Gabor gave acceptance speeches at the Oscars. By the time your foe makes sense of that, his starting running back will have had puppies.

But what about you? Hmm? Recall a memorable slam? Have a tried-and-true technique? Know someone who seems impervious to insult? Take a moment and tells us about it. Put together some (fit-for-publication) thoughts. You wont be too busy returning phone messages from your friends, Im sure, to reply.

In addition to the trash talking, the Sports Alarm has a huge gallery of high resolution pictures of beautiful women and models in bikinis. The most popular models are: Lindsay Lohan, Carrie Underwood, Alessandra Ambrosio, and Paris Hilton.